That's not Hitler

Mustache painted on Clara Barton

By SUSAN THACKER

A “Hitler mustache” spray painted on the mural of Clara Barton at the Great Bend Post Office was removed Thursday afternoon.

City Sanitarian Mike Brown said he and another city employee used a gel that removes graffiti from street signs to pull erase the black spray paint from the brick wall. “We got 99 percent of it off.”

Damage to the mural is still obvious, but the black mustache is gone.

Postmaster Rebecca Espinosa said staff noticed the vandalism Monday morning. “It wasn’t there Saturday,” she said. The building is owned by an individual in New York who leases it to the U.S. government, so Espinosa said she wasn’t sure what the next step will be.

“We hope that the police are ale to find out who did it,” she said. “We’re not pleased that someone chose to deface the painting.” She commented on the amount of time and effort that must have gone into the mural.

Karen P. Neuforth, executive director of the Barton County Arts Council, recalled the history of the Clara Barton mural, one of a series of publicly accessible paintings created during the Great Bend Mural Project that started in 1996 and continued through 1999. The project began thanks to an Arts in Education Programs and Communities grant of $5,000 from the Kansas Arts Commission. Muralist David Loewenstein worked with local students and volunteers to begin the process, and he created the portrait of famed Civil War nurse Clara Barton. It was the fifth mural in the project, and the only one in the series made to resemble a mosaic, using the pattern of the building’s bricks.

“Damaging public art does more than damage the art itself,” Neuforth commented. “It damages the community’s image. The vandals are harming the community as a whole by showing disrespect and displaying their ignorance.”

Captain Bob Robinson at the Great Bend Police Department said there are no leads on who was responsible for the vandalism, which took place just three blocks from the police station. He asked anyone with information to call the GBPD, 793-4120, or to make a tip anonymously by calling Crime Stoppers, 792-1300.